HUMANICS AND HIGHER EDUCATION A PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION BY Seth Arsenian, Ph. D Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics
A. THREE VIEWS OF MAN The view one takes of man affects profoundly one's thinking of what is possible for man and therefore of his education. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, three major views of man have dominated psychological thinking in America: behavioristic, psychoanalytic, and personological. And each in its own way has influenced our thinking about education in general, and higher education in particular. 1. Behaviorism. Behaviorism is associated with the name of John Broadus Watson (1878-1958) who having received a Master's degree in 1900 (he never received his Bachelor's degree because of a conflict with one of his professors who refused to give him a passing grade in one of the required courses) at Furman College in South Carolina went to Chicago University to study philosophy under the renowned John Dewey. He found Dewey "incomprehensible" and, losing his interest in philosophy, moved to psychology and neurology. He received his Ph. D. in 1903 and joined the staff at Chicago establishing there one of the early animal psychology laboratories. In 1908 Watson was offered a full professorship at Johns Hopkins University where he did his most important work until 1920, at which time his academic position came to an abrupt end because of unfavorable publicity regarding his divorce and remarriage. As a teacher of psychology courses, Watson became more and more disgusted and disgruntled with what he called the "intangibles and unapproachables" and decided to teach a psychology based on concrete facts, which he could obtain in his animal laboratory in observing rats learning to run mazes and solving problems. At this time, the two dominant schools of thought in psychology were: structuralism and functionalism. The former view was strongly expounded in America by Wilhelm Wundt's former student and one-time assistant, Edward Bradford Titchener at Cornell University. According to this view, psychology was "the science of conscious experience" whose structure and organization should be studied by the method of introspection. Functionalism, propounded by William James was represented in Chicago by Watson's own teacher, James R. Angell. According to Watson, structuralism, with its dependence on subjective introspection, was totally unacceptable; and functionalism did not go far enough to make psychology an objective naturalistic science. (22) In 1912, in a series of lectures at Columbia, at the invitation of James McKeen Cattell; in 1913, in a journal article; and later in 1914 in his book Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology; Watson sounded the manifesto of the new school which he called Behaviorism. "Psychology as the behaviorist views it", said Watson, "is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior.
Introspection forms no essential part of its methods . . . Psychology as the science of behavior need never use the terms of consciousness, mental states, mind, content, will, imagery and the like . . . It can be done in terms of stimulus and response, in terms of habit formation, habit integration and the like . . . If this is done, work . . . on the human being will be directly comparable with the work on animals". (25 p. 112) Watson's denunciation of the traditional mind-body dualism, instinctivistic and mentalistic explanations of human behavior and especially the subjective introspectionist methods of study; his proposals to establish psychology as a naturalistic science with objective, experimental and quantifiable methods of study centering on learning, strongly appealed to young psychologists. In 1915, at the age of 37, and after only 20 research publications, all but one on animal studies, Watson was elected to the Presidency of the American Psychological Association. Besides, Watson claimed that by the application of the methods of his science, he could take any normal infant and, given the freedom, he could "train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors" (25 p. 127). This extreme environmentalism with its hopeful promissory note (actually not a necessary corollary of behaviorism) fitted well with the American dream. Watson became not only popular in psychology but in the social sciences and education, as well. His later (1928) book entitled Psychological Care of the Infant and Child had wide acceptance and appeal. Under Watson's onslaught Titchener's structuralism crumbled and became anachronistic. James' Functionalism remained as an orientation but hardly as a competing school of psychological thought. Watson himself, becoming early acquainted with Bechterev's "objective psychology" and Pavlov's "conditioned response" theory, via their German and French translations, found them confirmatory of his own method and theory, extolled them, especially Pavlov's work in conditioning, and adapted them to his learning theory. This, so called classical period of Behaviorism, under Watson's compelling personality, became during 1912-1930, the American psychology. After 1930, Watson's influence on psychology ceased almost entirely. Watson moved into the business world (advertising) and the leadership moved to Clark Hull and his associates at Yale. Learning continued as the central subject-matter of psychological research and experimentation. Clark Hull, trained as an engineer at Wisconsin but later turning to psychology, gave a strong mathematical coloring to psychological thinking and experimentation. But the more complex and sophisticated the mathematical formulae of learning, the less explicit and relevant their meaning to education and psychotherapy became. A number of variations and subschools developed. Neal Miller and John Dollard of Yale extended a bridge toward psychoanalysis and found some common ground, especially in regard to child development. Edward Chase Tolman at California, moved toward Gestalt ideas and spoke about "Purposive Behaviorism"; Edward Lee Thorndike at Columbia, having started experimentation on animal learning even before Watson or Pavlov, found it necessary in 1932 to modify his laws of learning to align them with some Lewinian contentions. But perhaps the most potent behaviorist variation today is that of B.F. Skinner at Harvard, who has shifted the emphasis from respondent to operant conditioning, who has kept Watson's objectivism but discarded his physiologizing as futile, who has replaced rats with pigeons and by means of reinforcement schedules can teach docile pigeons to perform deeds which their forefathers never knew or imagined that a pigeon could ever do! As an evaluation of the behaviorist school of thought, particularly in regard to its view of man, let me quote an astute observer, Sigmund Koch, the editor of the three volume Psychology: A Study of a Science. Koch imputes that Behaviorism, by eliminating what it called "mentalistic" concepts by fiat, eliminated most of what belonged to psychology as a science. "For the most of the last thirty years", says Koch, psychologists have allowed the rat to preempt the human" . . . "thus seriously limiting psychology's legitimate concerns in honor of an "objectivistic" methodology that because of its generalizations gives but a false security of being objective." Koch believes that "Behaviorism - classical as well as neo - has demeaned man with its simplistic and unrealistic formulations and thus is defunct". (9) In the last statement Koch may be premature. But I fully agree with everything else he has said. The picture of man that emerges from the Behavioristic psychology is bleak. Of course man can learn, he can learn better than rat or pigeon, because he has language, but essentially like the rat or pigeon, he is extremely manipulable by mechanical means. By controlling the stimulus situation, or especially by means of reinforcement of response, according to Skinner, we can teach him anything we want him to do; to run a maze, memorize non-sense syllables or build a Utopian state called "Walden II". Man is an object, he can be manipulated, and the methods of such manipulation can be extremely useful in building and maintaining a totalitarian state. 2. Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was created by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a Viennese doctor, as a technique for the diagnosis and treatment of psychoneurotic patients. However, very soon after its inception in 1894-5 in Freud's daring and creative mind it developed into a theory of human personality. Freud's book, perhaps his most important work, on Interpretation of Dreams, published at the dawn of the twentieth century in 1899, opened up a discussion of great excitement as well as great controversy. The dream, said Freud wasn't mere idle imagery, it was the royal road to man's unconscious - that area of man's mind that through its dynamic wishes truly controls, most if not all, of man's behavior. During the nineteenth century, knowledge of Greek mythology was the sign of an educated person. Such mythology was used to introduce a subject or to confirm the contentions of a proposition. Freud used the Greek myth of Oedipus, as expounded by Sophocles, to confirm his contention that the strong attachment of the child to the parent of the opposite sex was an ancient as well as a universal recognition of the incestuous inclination of children around ages 3 to 5. This fitted well in his theory that man is born an animal with cannibalistic, murderous and incestuous wishes which must be curbed by culture to make man civilized. To the end of his life, Freud believed that this civilization of man was actually a superficial success, for, the minute one scratched the surface, the amoral and the animal in man appeared. Or else how could one explain the wars, the incest dreams, and the murderous violence - in language and deed - all around us? To Freud, according to a letter he wrote to his admirer in Switzerland, The Rev. Oskar Pfister: "Most (men) are in my experience riff-raff, whether they proclaim themselves adherents of this or that ethical doctrine". (11) Freud's pessimism was colossal, and it remained with him to the end of his life.
But let us return to Oedipus once more. Sophocles in working on this ancient myth of Thebes had created a trilogy; Oedipus, Tyranus, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. In the first, the story is told of how Oedipus when young, unknowingly kills his father, Laius, and marries his mother, Jocasta, and later upon the discovery of this horrendous incestual act, Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus, the King, plucks his eyes out and goes to exile. This is the story of the domination of man's unconscious. On the basis of this presupposition, which he called the Oedipus Complex, Freud explained not only neurotic behavior but the rise of morality in the human race, the meaning of religion, the history of Moses and monotheism, civilization and its discontents, and the art of DaVinci.
In the second of the trilogy, Oedipus at Colonus, near Athens, examines his guilt consciously and confronts reality; he atones for his guilt and comes to the conclusion that, love is a potent cure: ".... And yet one word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is Love" (14) Rollo May, originally a Freudian, who is now more closely identified with the Existentialists, in his "Significance of Symbols" (14) wonders why Freud got stuck with Oedipus Tyranus (the story of unconscious guilt) and failed to go to Oedipus at Colonus (the story of conscious confrontation). And now I would ask both Freud and May why neither went to the third of the trilogy, to Antigone, to find there the conscious moral act on behalf of duty and freedom against another Tyranus - Creon - enslaved by his unconscious. And there to hear that great panegyric to man and his capacities:
"Wonders are many, but none,
None is more wondrous than man.
Even the eldest of all the gods -
Earth, inexhaustible earth,
man masters her ....
Language and thought
light and rapid as wind
man has taught himself these and has learned the ways
of living in neighborliness, shelter from inhospitable frost;
Escape from the arrows of rain.
Cunning, cunning is man.
Artful beyond all dreaming" (7)
The point I am trying to make is that in Freudian psychoanalysis the view of man is dark, sick and animal. The child is the father of man, and man is the prisoner of his infantile past and of his biology. He is determined early in his life - before his conscious mind has emerged in fullness, and even in fullness Freud's ego remains a weak force. Freudian psychology fits the neurotic better than the healthy, it describes the lower animal-like levels of his existence rather than the conscious and spiritual levels of his attainment.
Kurt Goldstein once said: "Freud fails to do justice to the positive aspects of life. He fails to recognize that the basic phenomenon of life is an incessant process of coming to terms with the environment; he only sees escape and craving for release, not the pleasure of tension. (23) Both the behaviorists and the psychoanalysts have given us a truncated picture of man: man still stuck in the biological mud, man in the animal part of his make-up, man a slave to his unconscious and compulsive instinct and affect. Man is not seen in his emancipated intelligence, in his creative elan, in his symbolic and integrating capacities, in his spiritual nobility and self-transcending attainments. 3. Personology. It is difficult to associate the name of this school of thought with any specific person in particular. The term Personology was proposed and used by Henry Murray of Harvard, but the modern beginnings of it can extend to William James, certainly to William Stern. Gordon Allport of Harvard has done a yoeman's labor in this field. Kurt Goldstein, the neurologist; Carl Rogers, the psychotherapist; Abraham Maslow, the dynamic-holistic psychologist, have all made significant contributions. There are many others: Gestaltists, ego psychologists, cognitive theorists, some phenomenologists and existentialists who also can stand under the wide umbrella of this school of thought. The school is not terribly well organized, systemized, coordinated or even explicit. But there is no question about its vigorous existence and orientation - separate and different from either behaviorism or psychoanalysis. These two as I have indicated, have busied themselves with biological, animal-infant and sick aspects of human behavior and have found man limited in his capacities, constrained by his history, intolerant of tension, motivated by avoidance of pain or the search for pleasure. Man here is pushed by his unconscious biological drives rather than by conscious future-oriented goals. His picture is that of a midget, of a tragic creature, a burden to himself and to others. Opposed to this is the personological view of man as greatly resourceful and capable, his potentialities, especially in regard to his symbolic ability - are perhaps unlimited, he can be fully-functioning and self-directive; he can pursue conscious goals, and strive for mastery. The personologists do not deny the objective findings of the behaviorists and the psychoanalysts, but they regard them as partial, peripheral and rather inconsequential for the fuller study and understanding of the whole man.
Let me cite a couple of studies of Abraham Maslow. Maslow received all three of his academic degrees at Wisconsin. He learned to work with rats and monkeys in true behaviorist-orientation, he was at one time a research assistant to Edward Lee Thorndike. At a later point, he with Bela Mittleman, wrote a book on abnormal psychology in a somewhat analytic orientation. Towards the end of the 1930's, he came to know and study under Max Wertheimer, Kurt Goldstein, Ruth Benedict. He was tremendously impressed with these people, with their understanding, their humanity. He wanted to know what made them so human? Were there other such people? He selected some historical characters - persons in the past and those living in his day; people like Jefferson, Lincoln, Beethoven, Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and others. He described some fifteen characteristics that seemed common to these people. (12) At a later point Maslow sought people - his own students and others - who could describe " .... most wonderful experience or experiences of your life; happiest moments, ecstatic moments, moments of rapture, perhaps from being in love or from listening to music or suddenly "being hit" by a book, or a painting or from some great creative moment". (from actual instructions to his subjects). As a result of this study came his so-called "peak experiences". Such people at such moments feel more integrated, unified, are of a piece; they feel at the height of their powers, using all their capacities; they perform with greater ease and less effort, muscle does not fight muscle, feeling and reason converge, they are more expressive, creative, poetic; they feel graced, grateful, complete, etc. (13). This is of course a very partial report. But the point is that man can be noble, creative, spiritual, sublime, complete - these are within his capabilities - And if the behaviorists and the psychoanalysts didn't see them it is because their assumptions precluded their seeing them, or that their methods or their subjects for study did not manifest such qualities. Now I will maintain that the Humanics education is firmly based in personological psychology, which gives a view of the full dimension of man. Yes, man is in part animal, and he can be sick, restricted in his abilities, driven compulsively by his infantile wishes; but man can also by effort and education outgrow these, become healthy, versatile and consciously goal directed. The proper psychology of man, as Fromm, Allport and others maintain, is the psychology of the human condition (Fromm) and of mankind. (Allport).
I will further maintain that the proper task of education in general and the higher education in particular, is to provide the means and methods, the climate and the stimulation, the models and concepts of the healthy, mature, creative, self-actualizing and even self-transcending man. The purpose of education is to make man more human and humane.
And now let me present to you in a tentative fashion, since not all the evidence is in, three levels of capacities whose development should fall, in my opinion, within the task limits of higher education. I shall call these three levels of capacities a) actual or survival, b) potential or growth and c) possible or self-transcendent. They represent the upper half of the normal distribution curve. One can easily list three other levels of capacities - a) barely adaptive, b) neurotic, and c) sick and psychotic, to represent the lower half of the distribution curve. In this way one can get a picture of the full-dimensional man. Of course, these categories are approximate, overlapping and not discrete. By definition and by and large, the higher education draws its clientele from the upper half of the normal distribution. Therefore, leaving the ministration to the needs of the lower half of the distribution to hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation agencies and lower educational levels, I shall describe the three higher levels of capacities, the cultivation and development of which must fall within the purview of a Humanics oriented higher education. B. THREE LEVELS OF CAPACITIES Admittedly these levels of capacities are positively correlated with intelligence as measured by tests. But such correlations, as Terman has shown, are not perfect. The attempt here is to present these levels of capacities from a wholistic and not merely from an intelligence point of view. 1. The actual or survival level.
a) Effort is directed toward satisfying "deficit" needs: on physiological level - organic and visceral needs (lacks as well as overflow); on the psychological level needs for safety, belongingness, love and esteem - all of these in the sense of not having enough of and wanting more.
b) By and large, it is the pleasure principle that is operating; avoid tension, pain and anxiety - be happy in the sense of "care-less" meaning. c) The dominating concern is adjustment and adaptation with the resulting social tendency toward conformity because it is more convenient and less disturbing. d) The learning involves signal and sign learning - namely conditioning and problem solving. e) The humor and aesthetic appreciation are on the "gut level" - what Arthur Koestler calls "the ha ha experience". (10) f) Intellectual ability on the cognitive, recall and representational level.
g) Average endurance, strength and frustration tolerance abilities. h) Acceptable management of affairs on moral, social and economic levels - sufficient in a scarcity economy. 2. Potential or Growth level a) Extension of wants and satisfactions beyond a survival level in an economy of plenty - how to spend one's efforts or money beyond the needs for survival - "growth motivation". b) Moral behavior beyond conformity. In the sense of making decisions and choices and abiding by consequences. c) Concern with values - their conscious and hierarchical organization within self. d) Cognitive curiosity and the elation of discovery, what Gestaltists have called the "aha experience". e) Aesthetic appreciation of harmony, color, sense, beauty.
f) Enjoyment and utilization of symbolic materials beyond sign and signal level: enjoyment and production of poetry, scientific thinking, thinking on the higher conceptual levels. g) Self-consistency and self-cultivation. h) Concern for men, society, the world, future. 3. The Possible or Self-Transcendent level
a) "Peak experiences" (Maslow) - on experiencing unity within conflictless effort, feeling of grace, also of mastery.
b) Selfless soaring - the overwhelming and elevating experience on the hearing of a Bach Tocatta in a cathedral, or listening to Schiller's Ode to Joy, etc. c) The "Ha" experience (Koestler) in watching DaVinci's "Mona Lisa" or Venus de Milo. d) "Metaphoric" thinking* involving universal rather than idiosyncratic insights.
* Joseph Royce makes a distinction between three kinds of knowing: rationalistic, depending primarily on logical consistency; empirical, depending largely on consensual validation; and metaphoric, depending on symbolic and intuitive cognitions. (16) e) Integration of cognitive, aesthetic and moral appreciations and comprehensions on the levels of a Goethe, Beethoven, Shakespeare. f) Creativity of the order of a Newton or Einstein or a Poincare who spoke of the ability of making combinations that "reveal to us unsuspected kinship between . . . facts, long known, but wrongly believed to be strangers to one another." (4) g) A consuming mission or calling or commitment in life, a supreme loyalty, a "cardinal trait" (Allport) of the order of Gandhi, Tolstoy in his later life, or Schweitzer. It would seem to me that a college or university entrusted with the education of a selected population - at the upper end of the normal distribution - would consider its responsibility to develop the qualities beyond the survival level and to give the vision of the third, namely, self-transcendent level, as the beacon of the possible for man. On these higher levels, the earlier differentiations of cognitive, aesthetic and moral become integrated into a unitary stance, effort, appreciation and action. The oppositions of an earlier level between science, art and religion become interdependent and interrelated as functionings of an organism at a wholistic level of integrated behavior. When I started this paper, my mind was under the strong influence of Sophocles' Trilogy and this trilogical classification has dominated the organization and presentation of this paper. I have talked about three views of man, of three levels of his capacities. Now I want to talk about the three functions of Humanics education and will end with three final remarks.
C. THE THREE FUNCTIONS OF HUMANICS EDUCATION
1. Knowledge - One of the functions of higher education is to organize, transmit and create knowledge. We know that knowledge about man and his universe is growing at an unprecedented rate, it is doubling itself every decade. I maintain that most of our problems of today are directly and indirectly related to this rapid rate of the growth of knowledge. Before we know what there is to know, what we know becomes obsolete. Educational technology which is substantially behind the rate of advance in knowledge must develop more efficient methods of learning and relearning, of retrieval and utilization of accumulated knowledge and of adjusting attitudinally to the demands of the new knowledge.
Humanics education requires that knowledge be evaluated in terms of its relevance to the human condition and mankind. Certainly, "bare" facts, dead principles and vacuous generalizations must be thrown out as dead weight as suggested by Huston Smith (19). Beyond that, I would maintain that "knowledge for knowledge's sake" does not greatly concern the Humanics education. I would not object to people who consider this their valued criterion, but we are consciously biased in the direction of concerning ourselves with knowledge that man can use to enrich, enlarge and advance his life on this earth. This is why we require the justification of a course in terms of its relevance to Humanics when it wants to enter the curriculum.
To know thoroughly, to realize the significance of the knowledge for man, to develop technological skills in addition to knowledge and using it in the human helping activities is one of the major purposes of Humanics education. In this connection, let me add that extreme specialization, or separation into departments and disciplines are remnants from an older concept of higher education and do not often meet the requirements of a modern and vital human education. Furthermore, the distinctions made between general and professional education, between pure and applied science, between art and science are often irrelevant and vacuous.
2. Character, values and appreciations - In education in general, but especially in Humanics oriented higher education, knowledge, and skills per se are never sufficient "as goals"... no facts and principles that have been learned can serve any human purpose unless they are restrained and guided by character", says Sanford (17). Character involves an intellectual conviction as well as emotional loyalty and commitment to values. In the Humanics education, there should be opportunity for confrontation and examination of values, for their hierarchical arrangement and organization. This means that discriminations are made between appreciations, as well as values. The often quoted neutralist statement: de gustibus non disputandum est - is possible in matters that don't much matter. But in things that matter - in man's being and becoming - we must discriminate between what is important and trivial, between what is beautiful and ugly, between what is humane and uncouth.
3. Commitment. - Education in general and education oriented toward a Humanics philosophy believes that man's full capacities - mental, emotional, physical, must be developed and actualized to the fullest level possible. And that these capacities must be interpreted so that the ordinary oppositions and dichotomies, between body and mind, character and intellect find their integrations in the holistic person. These integrations generally take place in action, especially in interpersonal relations. In play, the boy or the girl is body, mind and emotion and it defies any separation between these. In human helping activities at any level, the general and the professional coalesce. In confronting life in joy or sorrow, in elation or despair, in creation or even in destruction, religion is brother to art and art to science. Humanics education is a wholistic approach to man, and action is where the person is whole. It is in action where his cognition - feeling and physical stamina - his spirit, mind and body - join together and are fully interactive and interdependent. Action more than spectator or audio-visual experience must become central in the effective educational process. But there is another value in action as education. Erich Fromm says: "One's sense of identity arises from belonging to some one and not from being some one" (6). Recently this phenomenon of identity has become popular thanks to the writings of Erik Erikson. Young people are trying to find their identity and according to a recent Life article some of these have gone to the island of Crete and are living in caves, previously occupied by lepers, to find their identity (21)! These youngsters forget that finding one's identity comes through social participation not separation, from confrontation not flight, from commitment to values not their denial. People develop identity in interpersonal relationships in belonging, caring, serving and loving people, not by solitary contemplation. Let me quote Fromm once more: "The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other being". (6) It is in the process of productive love, or care for others and serving fellowman that man finds not only his identity, but the wholeness of his being and becoming. These are in my opinion, some of the major psychological assumptions and directions of the Humanics philosophy of education at Springfield College. I wrote this paper last summer. Since then I have been following the heated discussion and the great controversy on the goals of a college or university. There are those who maintain that the university is a place where scholars busy themselves with the search for truth and understanding and only these. There are others who argue that this kind of goal rests on the old dualistic assumption of separation of mind and body, of thought and action, of scholar and citizen - dichotomies that no longer make psychological sense. The wholistic concepts of man require the integration of intellect and passion, contemplation and commitment, means and ends. I like the way Maslow puts it, and I think he is spelling out the Humanics philosophy: "I am not only the disinterested and impersonal seeker for pure, cold truth for its own sake. I am also very definitely interested and concerned with man's fate, with his ends and goals and with his future. I would like to help improve him and to better his prospects. I hope to teach him how to be brotherly, cooperative, peaceful, courageous and just". (20) D. THREE REMARKS
1. This is my third and last year in the position of Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics. I have greatly appreciated and enjoyed the honor. I guess the once a year lecture of the Professor of Humanics is becoming a Springfield tradition and I do recommend its continuation. My first paper was on The Meaning of Humanics (2); my second paper was a report of an actual study of Changes in Attitudes and Values of Four Years at Springfield College (3). The present paper has dealt with the psychological bases of the Humanics Philosophy and has tried to relate it to Higher Education in Springfield and in America. I believe that Humanics as the distinctive philosophy of education has something worthwhile to say to Higher Education in America today, and if our planned publication materializes, that message will be explicit, I hope.
2. This year rounds out my active association with Springfield College for thirty years. When I arrived on this campus in September of 1938, this College had 400 full-time students, now it has five times that many. Women students were not admitted at that time. I recall President Best saying: "We close the doors on them, but they enter from the windows." It was in 1950 that in a faculty meeting I proposed, Professor Bratton seconded and the decision of admitting women students to this College was favorably voted upon. This left a few of the old-timers unhappy, but I believe that our experience of nearly two decades has shown the wisdom of this decision.
During the Second World War, the College, outside of a few courses for part-time students, closed its doors as a four-year college. The Air - Cadet Training Program, and later the Navy, took over the campus. Practically the entire faculty and all the students were in war service. Later in 1945, a few of us returned to reopen the College. At that time, the only building at the College's disposal - the rest was in the Navy's hands - was the library. President Best was in the last year of his service, President-Designate Limbert was here to collect a new faculty and start the College. The late Francis Oakley came to supervise the financial and developmental aspects of the College; Harrison Clarke was hired to develop the graduate program. The late Dr. Drewry was recruiting teachers for his education program, and I was the Acting-Director of Admissions, the Acting-Dean before Dr. Merriam came and the Acting General Flunky on this campus. It was amazing how quickly the students rushed back to the campus and a new faculty was organized. There were more new faculty than old, and at the faculty convention in September, 1946, John Bunn got up to say: "The new faculty welcomes the return of the members of the old faculty." These were exciting days! Much has happened on this campus since 1945 under several enterprising presidents. I think things look especially promising and confident now.
3. In thirty years, this College has changed me, and in some minor ways, I have perhaps changed this College. At first, I, having come from a European and Liberal Arts background, resented its professional orientation on the undergraduate level. I did not understand its Humanics philosophy and did not think it very educative to spend the student's time in fieldwork rather than in the classroom. It was an "odd" College, so different from the surrounding colleges in the Connecticut valley. Now I have come to think that this very "oddness" is in fact its strength as well as its distinctiveness. If I am correct in my observation, liberal arts colleges, unless they revise their organization and orientation drastically, are becoming anachronistic and obsolete. Some predict in fact the demise of the liberal arts college in the year 2000, if not before (1). Contrariwise, a college like Springfield with its judicious amalgamation of the liberal and the professional, oriented towards human service occupations, utilizing a variety of learning methods - from the action-experience to didactic-experimental - seems more relevant to the times. From its beginning, the College has emphasized the being and becoming of the student in the social action participation process. The student is looked upon as a whole person - mind, body, spirit, and not mind alone, or body alone or spirit alone. With this wholistic view has gone the effort to help the student change himself as a preparatory and necessary condition for helping change others. Change, drastic change, is, says Eric Hoffer "the main difficulty and challenge of our age - (change) from subjection to equality, from poverty to affluence, from work to leisure." And our students are going to be the "change agents", those who in leadership positions will help people so that change, rapid change, comes about in ways human and humane. It encourages and maintains human values above all other values; it lends to integration rather than disintegration, to constructive creation rather than to violence and destruction. The world has become a small place. Looked at by the astronauts from planetary space, it looks no larger than the moon. In this planetary age, all wars become civil, interracial wars, violence becomes senseless, fear and famine have no reason for being. To bring about this new world, Springfield College has a role to play; with its flexible and innovative programs, with its international and intercultural orientation, and with its humanics philosophy which builds, enriches and affirms life. In these, Springfield finds its calling.
"Earth-wide may happy boyhood lift high his wond'ring eyes,
Strong youth bring back the vision of earthly paradise;
To follow truth to wisdom, nor faint through falt'ring fears,
Be this thy task, O Springfield, through all the years." (From A Song for Springfield by F. S. Hyde) REFERENCES
1. Arlt, Gustave O. Graduate Education in the United States. Paper presented at the AAHPER Conference in Washington, D. C., January, 1967.
2. Arsenian, Seth. The Meaning of Humanics. Paper presented to Springfield College faculty and students. January, 1967. 3. Arsenian, Seth. Changes in Attitudes and Values During Four Years of College. Paper presented to Springfield College faculty and students. January, 1968.
4. Bruner, Jerome S. On Knowing. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass. - 1962.
5. Bruner, Jerome S. Toward a Theory of Instruction. W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 1966.
6. Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1956.
7. Highet, Gilbert. Man's Unconquerable Mind. Columbia University Press. New York, 1954.
8. Hoffer, Eric. The Temper of our Time. Harper and Row, New York, 1967.
9. Koch, Sigmund. "Psychology and Emerging Conceptions of Knowledge as Unitary" in Behaviorism and Phenomenology - University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964.
10. Koestler, Arthur. The Art of Creation. MacMillan and Company, New York, 1964.
11. Jones, Ernest. The life and work of Sigmund Freud. Basic Books, New York, 1953.
12. Maslow, Abraham, H. Self-Actualizing People. Personality Symposia. No. 1, Grune & Stratton, New York, 1950.
13. Maslow, Abraham, H. ''Peak Experiences as Acute Identity Experiences", American Journal of Psychoanalysis. 1961. 21, p. 254- 260.
14. May, Rollo. Symbolism in Religion and Literature. George Braziller, New York, 1960.
15. Mullahy, Patrick. Oedipus, Myth and Complex. Hermitage House, Inc . New York, 1953.
16, Royce, Joseph R. Psychology and the Symbol. Random House, New York, 1965.
17. Sanford, Nevitt (Ed. ) College and Character. John Wiley, New York, 1964.
18, Smith, G. Kerry (Ed) In Search of Leaders. American Association for Higher Education.
N. E. A. Washington, D. C. 1967.
19. Smith, Huston. The Purpose of Higher Education. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1955.
20. Teevan, R. C. and Birney, R. C. Theories of Motivation in Personality and Social Psychology. New Jersey, D. Van Nostrand and Company, Inc. 1964. (Mallow's statement is on page 113).
21. Thompson, Thomas. "A Restless Generation of U. S. Youth Roams Abroad", Life Magazine. July 19, 1968.
22. Watson, Robert I. The Great Psychologists. 2nd Ed. J. B. Lippincott Company, New York, 1968.
23. Wolman, Benjamin B. Contemporary Theories and Systems in Psychology. Harper and Brothers. New York, 1960.
24. Woodring, Paul. The Higher Learning in America. McGraw-Hill, New York, N. Y. 1968.
25. Woodworth, R. S. and Sheehan, M.R. Contemporary Schools of Psychology, 3rd Ed. The Ronald Press, New York, 1964.
25. Woodworth, R. S. and Sheehan, M.R. Contemporary Schools of Psychology, 3rd Ed. The Ronald Press, New York, 1964.

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HUMANICS AND HIGHER EDUCATION A PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION BY Seth Arsenian, Ph. D Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics
A. THREE VIEWS OF MAN The view one takes of man affects profoundly one's thinking of what is possible for man and therefore of his education. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, three major views of man have dominated psychological thinking in America: behavioristic, psychoanalytic, and personological. And each in its own way has influenced our thinking about education in general, and higher education in particular. 1. Behaviorism. Behaviorism is associated with the name of John Broadus Watson (1878-1958) who having received a Master's degree in 1900 (he never received his Bachelor's degree because of a conflict with one of his professors who refused to give him a passing grade in one of the required courses) at Furman College in South Carolina went to Chicago University to study philosophy under the renowned John Dewey. He found Dewey "incomprehensible" and, losing his interest in philosophy, moved to psychology and neurology. He received his Ph. D. in 1903 and joined the staff at Chicago establishing there one of the early animal psychology laboratories. In 1908 Watson was offered a full professorship at Johns Hopkins University where he did his most important work until 1920, at which time his academic position came to an abrupt end because of unfavorable publicity regarding his divorce and remarriage. As a teacher of psychology courses, Watson became more and more disgusted and disgruntled with what he called the "intangibles and unapproachables" and decided to teach a psychology based on concrete facts, which he could obtain in his animal laboratory in observing rats learning to run mazes and solving problems. At this time, the two dominant schools of thought in psychology were: structuralism and functionalism. The former view was strongly expounded in America by Wilhelm Wundt's former student and one-time assistant, Edward Bradford Titchener at Cornell University. According to this view, psychology was "the science of conscious experience" whose structure and organization should be studied by the method of introspection. Functionalism, propounded by William James was represented in Chicago by Watson's own teacher, James R. Angell. According to Watson, structuralism, with its dependence on subjective introspection, was totally unacceptable; and functionalism did not go far enough to make psychology an objective naturalistic science. (22) In 1912, in a series of lectures at Columbia, at the invitation of James McKeen Cattell; in 1913, in a journal article; and later in 1914 in his book Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology; Watson sounded the manifesto of the new school which he called Behaviorism. "Psychology as the behaviorist views it", said Watson, "is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior.
Introspection forms no essential part of its methods . . . Psychology as the science of behavior need never use the terms of consciousness, mental states, mind, content, will, imagery and the like . . . It can be done in terms of stimulus and response, in terms of habit formation, habit integration and the like . . . If this is done, work . . . on the human being will be directly comparable with the work on animals". (25 p. 112) Watson's denunciation of the traditional mind-body dualism, instinctivistic and mentalistic explanations of human behavior and especially the subjective introspectionist methods of study; his proposals to establish psychology as a naturalistic science with objective, experimental and quantifiable methods of study centering on learning, strongly appealed to young psychologists. In 1915, at the age of 37, and after only 20 research publications, all but one on animal studies, Watson was elected to the Presidency of the American Psychological Association. Besides, Watson claimed that by the application of the methods of his science, he could take any normal infant and, given the freedom, he could "train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors" (25 p. 127). This extreme environmentalism with its hopeful promissory note (actually not a necessary corollary of behaviorism) fitted well with the American dream. Watson became not only popular in psychology but in the social sciences and education, as well. His later (1928) book entitled Psychological Care of the Infant and Child had wide acceptance and appeal. Under Watson's onslaught Titchener's structuralism crumbled and became anachronistic. James' Functionalism remained as an orientation but hardly as a competing school of psychological thought. Watson himself, becoming early acquainted with Bechterev's "objective psychology" and Pavlov's "conditioned response" theory, via their German and French translations, found them confirmatory of his own method and theory, extolled them, especially Pavlov's work in conditioning, and adapted them to his learning theory. This, so called classical period of Behaviorism, under Watson's compelling personality, became during 1912-1930, the American psychology. After 1930, Watson's influence on psychology ceased almost entirely. Watson moved into the business world (advertising) and the leadership moved to Clark Hull and his associates at Yale. Learning continued as the central subject-matter of psychological research and experimentation. Clark Hull, trained as an engineer at Wisconsin but later turning to psychology, gave a strong mathematical coloring to psychological thinking and experimentation. But the more complex and sophisticated the mathematical formulae of learning, the less explicit and relevant their meaning to education and psychotherapy became. A number of variations and subschools developed. Neal Miller and John Dollard of Yale extended a bridge toward psychoanalysis and found some common ground, especially in regard to child development. Edward Chase Tolman at California, moved toward Gestalt ideas and spoke about "Purposive Behaviorism"; Edward Lee Thorndike at Columbia, having started experimentation on animal learning even before Watson or Pavlov, found it necessary in 1932 to modify his laws of learning to align them with some Lewinian contentions. But perhaps the most potent behaviorist variation today is that of B.F. Skinner at Harvard, who has shifted the emphasis from respondent to operant conditioning, who has kept Watson's objectivism but discarded his physiologizing as futile, who has replaced rats with pigeons and by means of reinforcement schedules can teach docile pigeons to perform deeds which their forefathers never knew or imagined that a pigeon could ever do! As an evaluation of the behaviorist school of thought, particularly in regard to its view of man, let me quote an astute observer, Sigmund Koch, the editor of the three volume Psychology: A Study of a Science. Koch imputes that Behaviorism, by eliminating what it called "mentalistic" concepts by fiat, eliminated most of what belonged to psychology as a science. "For the most of the last thirty years", says Koch, psychologists have allowed the rat to preempt the human" . . . "thus seriously limiting psychology's legitimate concerns in honor of an "objectivistic" methodology that because of its generalizations gives but a false security of being objective." Koch believes that "Behaviorism - classical as well as neo - has demeaned man with its simplistic and unrealistic formulations and thus is defunct". (9) In the last statement Koch may be premature. But I fully agree with everything else he has said. The picture of man that emerges from the Behavioristic psychology is bleak. Of course man can learn, he can learn better than rat or pigeon, because he has language, but essentially like the rat or pigeon, he is extremely manipulable by mechanical means. By controlling the stimulus situation, or especially by means of reinforcement of response, according to Skinner, we can teach him anything we want him to do; to run a maze, memorize non-sense syllables or build a Utopian state called "Walden II". Man is an object, he can be manipulated, and the methods of such manipulation can be extremely useful in building and maintaining a totalitarian state. 2. Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was created by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a Viennese doctor, as a technique for the diagnosis and treatment of psychoneurotic patients. However, very soon after its inception in 1894-5 in Freud's daring and creative mind it developed into a theory of human personality. Freud's book, perhaps his most important work, on Interpretation of Dreams, published at the dawn of the twentieth century in 1899, opened up a discussion of great excitement as well as great controversy. The dream, said Freud wasn't mere idle imagery, it was the royal road to man's unconscious - that area of man's mind that through its dynamic wishes truly controls, most if not all, of man's behavior. During the nineteenth century, knowledge of Greek mythology was the sign of an educated person. Such mythology was used to introduce a subject or to confirm the contentions of a proposition. Freud used the Greek myth of Oedipus, as expounded by Sophocles, to confirm his contention that the strong attachment of the child to the parent of the opposite sex was an ancient as well as a universal recognition of the incestuous inclination of children around ages 3 to 5. This fitted well in his theory that man is born an animal with cannibalistic, murderous and incestuous wishes which must be curbed by culture to make man civilized. To the end of his life, Freud believed that this civilization of man was actually a superficial success, for, the minute one scratched the surface, the amoral and the animal in man appeared. Or else how could one explain the wars, the incest dreams, and the murderous violence - in language and deed - all around us? To Freud, according to a letter he wrote to his admirer in Switzerland, The Rev. Oskar Pfister: "Most (men) are in my experience riff-raff, whether they proclaim themselves adherents of this or that ethical doctrine". (11) Freud's pessimism was colossal, and it remained with him to the end of his life.
But let us return to Oedipus once more. Sophocles in working on this ancient myth of Thebes had created a trilogy; Oedipus, Tyranus, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. In the first, the story is told of how Oedipus when young, unknowingly kills his father, Laius, and marries his mother, Jocasta, and later upon the discovery of this horrendous incestual act, Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus, the King, plucks his eyes out and goes to exile. This is the story of the domination of man's unconscious. On the basis of this presupposition, which he called the Oedipus Complex, Freud explained not only neurotic behavior but the rise of morality in the human race, the meaning of religion, the history of Moses and monotheism, civilization and its discontents, and the art of DaVinci.
In the second of the trilogy, Oedipus at Colonus, near Athens, examines his guilt consciously and confronts reality; he atones for his guilt and comes to the conclusion that, love is a potent cure: ".... And yet one word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is Love" (14) Rollo May, originally a Freudian, who is now more closely identified with the Existentialists, in his "Significance of Symbols" (14) wonders why Freud got stuck with Oedipus Tyranus (the story of unconscious guilt) and failed to go to Oedipus at Colonus (the story of conscious confrontation). And now I would ask both Freud and May why neither went to the third of the trilogy, to Antigone, to find there the conscious moral act on behalf of duty and freedom against another Tyranus - Creon - enslaved by his unconscious. And there to hear that great panegyric to man and his capacities:
"Wonders are many, but none,
None is more wondrous than man.
Even the eldest of all the gods -
Earth, inexhaustible earth,
man masters her ....
Language and thought
light and rapid as wind
man has taught himself these and has learned the ways
of living in neighborliness, shelter from inhospitable frost;
Escape from the arrows of rain.
Cunning, cunning is man.
Artful beyond all dreaming" (7)
The point I am trying to make is that in Freudian psychoanalysis the view of man is dark, sick and animal. The child is the father of man, and man is the prisoner of his infantile past and of his biology. He is determined early in his life - before his conscious mind has emerged in fullness, and even in fullness Freud's ego remains a weak force. Freudian psychology fits the neurotic better than the healthy, it describes the lower animal-like levels of his existence rather than the conscious and spiritual levels of his attainment.
Kurt Goldstein once said: "Freud fails to do justice to the positive aspects of life. He fails to recognize that the basic phenomenon of life is an incessant process of coming to terms with the environment; he only sees escape and craving for release, not the pleasure of tension. (23) Both the behaviorists and the psychoanalysts have given us a truncated picture of man: man still stuck in the biological mud, man in the animal part of his make-up, man a slave to his unconscious and compulsive instinct and affect. Man is not seen in his emancipated intelligence, in his creative elan, in his symbolic and integrating capacities, in his spiritual nobility and self-transcending attainments. 3. Personology. It is difficult to associate the name of this school of thought with any specific person in particular. The term Personology was proposed and used by Henry Murray of Harvard, but the modern beginnings of it can extend to William James, certainly to William Stern. Gordon Allport of Harvard has done a yoeman's labor in this field. Kurt Goldstein, the neurologist; Carl Rogers, the psychotherapist; Abraham Maslow, the dynamic-holistic psychologist, have all made significant contributions. There are many others: Gestaltists, ego psychologists, cognitive theorists, some phenomenologists and existentialists who also can stand under the wide umbrella of this school of thought. The school is not terribly well organized, systemized, coordinated or even explicit. But there is no question about its vigorous existence and orientation - separate and different from either behaviorism or psychoanalysis. These two as I have indicated, have busied themselves with biological, animal-infant and sick aspects of human behavior and have found man limited in his capacities, constrained by his history, intolerant of tension, motivated by avoidance of pain or the search for pleasure. Man here is pushed by his unconscious biological drives rather than by conscious future-oriented goals. His picture is that of a midget, of a tragic creature, a burden to himself and to others. Opposed to this is the personological view of man as greatly resourceful and capable, his potentialities, especially in regard to his symbolic ability - are perhaps unlimited, he can be fully-functioning and self-directive; he can pursue conscious goals, and strive for mastery. The personologists do not deny the objective findings of the behaviorists and the psychoanalysts, but they regard them as partial, peripheral and rather inconsequential for the fuller study and understanding of the whole man.
Let me cite a couple of studies of Abraham Maslow. Maslow received all three of his academic degrees at Wisconsin. He learned to work with rats and monkeys in true behaviorist-orientation, he was at one time a research assistant to Edward Lee Thorndike. At a later point, he with Bela Mittleman, wrote a book on abnormal psychology in a somewhat analytic orientation. Towards the end of the 1930's, he came to know and study under Max Wertheimer, Kurt Goldstein, Ruth Benedict. He was tremendously impressed with these people, with their understanding, their humanity. He wanted to know what made them so human? Were there other such people? He selected some historical characters - persons in the past and those living in his day; people like Jefferson, Lincoln, Beethoven, Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and others. He described some fifteen characteristics that seemed common to these people. (12) At a later point Maslow sought people - his own students and others - who could describe " .... most wonderful experience or experiences of your life; happiest moments, ecstatic moments, moments of rapture, perhaps from being in love or from listening to music or suddenly "being hit" by a book, or a painting or from some great creative moment". (from actual instructions to his subjects). As a result of this study came his so-called "peak experiences". Such people at such moments feel more integrated, unified, are of a piece; they feel at the height of their powers, using all their capacities; they perform with greater ease and less effort, muscle does not fight muscle, feeling and reason converge, they are more expressive, creative, poetic; they feel graced, grateful, complete, etc. (13). This is of course a very partial report. But the point is that man can be noble, creative, spiritual, sublime, complete - these are within his capabilities - And if the behaviorists and the psychoanalysts didn't see them it is because their assumptions precluded their seeing them, or that their methods or their subjects for study did not manifest such qualities. Now I will maintain that the Humanics education is firmly based in personological psychology, which gives a view of the full dimension of man. Yes, man is in part animal, and he can be sick, restricted in his abilities, driven compulsively by his infantile wishes; but man can also by effort and education outgrow these, become healthy, versatile and consciously goal directed. The proper psychology of man, as Fromm, Allport and others maintain, is the psychology of the human condition (Fromm) and of mankind. (Allport).
I will further maintain that the proper task of education in general and the higher education in particular, is to provide the means and methods, the climate and the stimulation, the models and concepts of the healthy, mature, creative, self-actualizing and even self-transcending man. The purpose of education is to make man more human and humane.
And now let me present to you in a tentative fashion, since not all the evidence is in, three levels of capacities whose development should fall, in my opinion, within the task limits of higher education. I shall call these three levels of capacities a) actual or survival, b) potential or growth and c) possible or self-transcendent. They represent the upper half of the normal distribution curve. One can easily list three other levels of capacities - a) barely adaptive, b) neurotic, and c) sick and psychotic, to represent the lower half of the distribution curve. In this way one can get a picture of the full-dimensional man. Of course, these categories are approximate, overlapping and not discrete. By definition and by and large, the higher education draws its clientele from the upper half of the normal distribution. Therefore, leaving the ministration to the needs of the lower half of the distribution to hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation agencies and lower educational levels, I shall describe the three higher levels of capacities, the cultivation and development of which must fall within the purview of a Humanics oriented higher education. B. THREE LEVELS OF CAPACITIES Admittedly these levels of capacities are positively correlated with intelligence as measured by tests. But such correlations, as Terman has shown, are not perfect. The attempt here is to present these levels of capacities from a wholistic and not merely from an intelligence point of view. 1. The actual or survival level.
a) Effort is directed toward satisfying "deficit" needs: on physiological level - organic and visceral needs (lacks as well as overflow); on the psychological level needs for safety, belongingness, love and esteem - all of these in the sense of not having enough of and wanting more.
b) By and large, it is the pleasure principle that is operating; avoid tension, pain and anxiety - be happy in the sense of "care-less" meaning. c) The dominating concern is adjustment and adaptation with the resulting social tendency toward conformity because it is more convenient and less disturbing. d) The learning involves signal and sign learning - namely conditioning and problem solving. e) The humor and aesthetic appreciation are on the "gut level" - what Arthur Koestler calls "the ha ha experience". (10) f) Intellectual ability on the cognitive, recall and representational level.
g) Average endurance, strength and frustration tolerance abilities. h) Acceptable management of affairs on moral, social and economic levels - sufficient in a scarcity economy. 2. Potential or Growth level a) Extension of wants and satisfactions beyond a survival level in an economy of plenty - how to spend one's efforts or money beyond the needs for survival - "growth motivation". b) Moral behavior beyond conformity. In the sense of making decisions and choices and abiding by consequences. c) Concern with values - their conscious and hierarchical organization within self. d) Cognitive curiosity and the elation of discovery, what Gestaltists have called the "aha experience". e) Aesthetic appreciation of harmony, color, sense, beauty.
f) Enjoyment and utilization of symbolic materials beyond sign and signal level: enjoyment and production of poetry, scientific thinking, thinking on the higher conceptual levels. g) Self-consistency and self-cultivation. h) Concern for men, society, the world, future. 3. The Possible or Self-Transcendent level
a) "Peak experiences" (Maslow) - on experiencing unity within conflictless effort, feeling of grace, also of mastery.
b) Selfless soaring - the overwhelming and elevating experience on the hearing of a Bach Tocatta in a cathedral, or listening to Schiller's Ode to Joy, etc. c) The "Ha" experience (Koestler) in watching DaVinci's "Mona Lisa" or Venus de Milo. d) "Metaphoric" thinking* involving universal rather than idiosyncratic insights.
* Joseph Royce makes a distinction between three kinds of knowing: rationalistic, depending primarily on logical consistency; empirical, depending largely on consensual validation; and metaphoric, depending on symbolic and intuitive cognitions. (16) e) Integration of cognitive, aesthetic and moral appreciations and comprehensions on the levels of a Goethe, Beethoven, Shakespeare. f) Creativity of the order of a Newton or Einstein or a Poincare who spoke of the ability of making combinations that "reveal to us unsuspected kinship between . . . facts, long known, but wrongly believed to be strangers to one another." (4) g) A consuming mission or calling or commitment in life, a supreme loyalty, a "cardinal trait" (Allport) of the order of Gandhi, Tolstoy in his later life, or Schweitzer. It would seem to me that a college or university entrusted with the education of a selected population - at the upper end of the normal distribution - would consider its responsibility to develop the qualities beyond the survival level and to give the vision of the third, namely, self-transcendent level, as the beacon of the possible for man. On these higher levels, the earlier differentiations of cognitive, aesthetic and moral become integrated into a unitary stance, effort, appreciation and action. The oppositions of an earlier level between science, art and religion become interdependent and interrelated as functionings of an organism at a wholistic level of integrated behavior. When I started this paper, my mind was under the strong influence of Sophocles' Trilogy and this trilogical classification has dominated the organization and presentation of this paper. I have talked about three views of man, of three levels of his capacities. Now I want to talk about the three functions of Humanics education and will end with three final remarks.
C. THE THREE FUNCTIONS OF HUMANICS EDUCATION
1. Knowledge - One of the functions of higher education is to organize, transmit and create knowledge. We know that knowledge about man and his universe is growing at an unprecedented rate, it is doubling itself every decade. I maintain that most of our problems of today are directly and indirectly related to this rapid rate of the growth of knowledge. Before we know what there is to know, what we know becomes obsolete. Educational technology which is substantially behind the rate of advance in knowledge must develop more efficient methods of learning and relearning, of retrieval and utilization of accumulated knowledge and of adjusting attitudinally to the demands of the new knowledge.
Humanics education requires that knowledge be evaluated in terms of its relevance to the human condition and mankind. Certainly, "bare" facts, dead principles and vacuous generalizations must be thrown out as dead weight as suggested by Huston Smith (19). Beyond that, I would maintain that "knowledge for knowledge's sake" does not greatly concern the Humanics education. I would not object to people who consider this their valued criterion, but we are consciously biased in the direction of concerning ourselves with knowledge that man can use to enrich, enlarge and advance his life on this earth. This is why we require the justification of a course in terms of its relevance to Humanics when it wants to enter the curriculum.
To know thoroughly, to realize the significance of the knowledge for man, to develop technological skills in addition to knowledge and using it in the human helping activities is one of the major purposes of Humanics education. In this connection, let me add that extreme specialization, or separation into departments and disciplines are remnants from an older concept of higher education and do not often meet the requirements of a modern and vital human education. Furthermore, the distinctions made between general and professional education, between pure and applied science, between art and science are often irrelevant and vacuous.
2. Character, values and appreciations - In education in general, but especially in Humanics oriented higher education, knowledge, and skills per se are never sufficient "as goals"... no facts and principles that have been learned can serve any human purpose unless they are restrained and guided by character", says Sanford (17). Character involves an intellectual conviction as well as emotional loyalty and commitment to values. In the Humanics education, there should be opportunity for confrontation and examination of values, for their hierarchical arrangement and organization. This means that discriminations are made between appreciations, as well as values. The often quoted neutralist statement: de gustibus non disputandum est - is possible in matters that don't much matter. But in things that matter - in man's being and becoming - we must discriminate between what is important and trivial, between what is beautiful and ugly, between what is humane and uncouth.
3. Commitment. - Education in general and education oriented toward a Humanics philosophy believes that man's full capacities - mental, emotional, physical, must be developed and actualized to the fullest level possible. And that these capacities must be interpreted so that the ordinary oppositions and dichotomies, between body and mind, character and intellect find their integrations in the holistic person. These integrations generally take place in action, especially in interpersonal relations. In play, the boy or the girl is body, mind and emotion and it defies any separation between these. In human helping activities at any level, the general and the professional coalesce. In confronting life in joy or sorrow, in elation or despair, in creation or even in destruction, religion is brother to art and art to science. Humanics education is a wholistic approach to man, and action is where the person is whole. It is in action where his cognition - feeling and physical stamina - his spirit, mind and body - join together and are fully interactive and interdependent. Action more than spectator or audio-visual experience must become central in the effective educational process. But there is another value in action as education. Erich Fromm says: "One's sense of identity arises from belonging to some one and not from being some one" (6). Recently this phenomenon of identity has become popular thanks to the writings of Erik Erikson. Young people are trying to find their identity and according to a recent Life article some of these have gone to the island of Crete and are living in caves, previously occupied by lepers, to find their identity (21)! These youngsters forget that finding one's identity comes through social participation not separation, from confrontation not flight, from commitment to values not their denial. People develop identity in interpersonal relationships in belonging, caring, serving and loving people, not by solitary contemplation. Let me quote Fromm once more: "The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other being". (6) It is in the process of productive love, or care for others and serving fellowman that man finds not only his identity, but the wholeness of his being and becoming. These are in my opinion, some of the major psychological assumptions and directions of the Humanics philosophy of education at Springfield College. I wrote this paper last summer. Since then I have been following the heated discussion and the great controversy on the goals of a college or university. There are those who maintain that the university is a place where scholars busy themselves with the search for truth and understanding and only these. There are others who argue that this kind of goal rests on the old dualistic assumption of separation of mind and body, of thought and action, of scholar and citizen - dichotomies that no longer make psychological sense. The wholistic concepts of man require the integration of intellect and passion, contemplation and commitment, means and ends. I like the way Maslow puts it, and I think he is spelling out the Humanics philosophy: "I am not only the disinterested and impersonal seeker for pure, cold truth for its own sake. I am also very definitely interested and concerned with man's fate, with his ends and goals and with his future. I would like to help improve him and to better his prospects. I hope to teach him how to be brotherly, cooperative, peaceful, courageous and just". (20) D. THREE REMARKS
1. This is my third and last year in the position of Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics. I have greatly appreciated and enjoyed the honor. I guess the once a year lecture of the Professor of Humanics is becoming a Springfield tradition and I do recommend its continuation. My first paper was on The Meaning of Humanics (2); my second paper was a report of an actual study of Changes in Attitudes and Values of Four Years at Springfield College (3). The present paper has dealt with the psychological bases of the Humanics Philosophy and has tried to relate it to Higher Education in Springfield and in America. I believe that Humanics as the distinctive philosophy of education has something worthwhile to say to Higher Education in America today, and if our planned publication materializes, that message will be explicit, I hope.
2. This year rounds out my active association with Springfield College for thirty years. When I arrived on this campus in September of 1938, this College had 400 full-time students, now it has five times that many. Women students were not admitted at that time. I recall President Best saying: "We close the doors on them, but they enter from the windows." It was in 1950 that in a faculty meeting I proposed, Professor Bratton seconded and the decision of admitting women students to this College was favorably voted upon. This left a few of the old-timers unhappy, but I believe that our experience of nearly two decades has shown the wisdom of this decision.
During the Second World War, the College, outside of a few courses for part-time students, closed its doors as a four-year college. The Air - Cadet Training Program, and later the Navy, took over the campus. Practically the entire faculty and all the students were in war service. Later in 1945, a few of us returned to reopen the College. At that time, the only building at the College's disposal - the rest was in the Navy's hands - was the library. President Best was in the last year of his service, President-Designate Limbert was here to collect a new faculty and start the College. The late Francis Oakley came to supervise the financial and developmental aspects of the College; Harrison Clarke was hired to develop the graduate program. The late Dr. Drewry was recruiting teachers for his education program, and I was the Acting-Director of Admissions, the Acting-Dean before Dr. Merriam came and the Acting General Flunky on this campus. It was amazing how quickly the students rushed back to the campus and a new faculty was organized. There were more new faculty than old, and at the faculty convention in September, 1946, John Bunn got up to say: "The new faculty welcomes the return of the members of the old faculty." These were exciting days! Much has happened on this campus since 1945 under several enterprising presidents. I think things look especially promising and confident now.
3. In thirty years, this College has changed me, and in some minor ways, I have perhaps changed this College. At first, I, having come from a European and Liberal Arts background, resented its professional orientation on the undergraduate level. I did not understand its Humanics philosophy and did not think it very educative to spend the student's time in fieldwork rather than in the classroom. It was an "odd" College, so different from the surrounding colleges in the Connecticut valley. Now I have come to think that this very "oddness" is in fact its strength as well as its distinctiveness. If I am correct in my observation, liberal arts colleges, unless they revise their organization and orientation drastically, are becoming anachronistic and obsolete. Some predict in fact the demise of the liberal arts college in the year 2000, if not before (1). Contrariwise, a college like Springfield with its judicious amalgamation of the liberal and the professional, oriented towards human service occupations, utilizing a variety of learning methods - from the action-experience to didactic-experimental - seems more relevant to the times. From its beginning, the College has emphasized the being and becoming of the student in the social action participation process. The student is looked upon as a whole person - mind, body, spirit, and not mind alone, or body alone or spirit alone. With this wholistic view has gone the effort to help the student change himself as a preparatory and necessary condition for helping change others. Change, drastic change, is, says Eric Hoffer "the main difficulty and challenge of our age - (change) from subjection to equality, from poverty to affluence, from work to leisure." And our students are going to be the "change agents", those who in leadership positions will help people so that change, rapid change, comes about in ways human and humane. It encourages and maintains human values above all other values; it lends to integration rather than disintegration, to constructive creation rather than to violence and destruction. The world has become a small place. Looked at by the astronauts from planetary space, it looks no larger than the moon. In this planetary age, all wars become civil, interracial wars, violence becomes senseless, fear and famine have no reason for being. To bring about this new world, Springfield College has a role to play; with its flexible and innovative programs, with its international and intercultural orientation, and with its humanics philosophy which builds, enriches and affirms life. In these, Springfield finds its calling.
"Earth-wide may happy boyhood lift high his wond'ring eyes,
Strong youth bring back the vision of earthly paradise;
To follow truth to wisdom, nor faint through falt'ring fears,
Be this thy task, O Springfield, through all the years." (From A Song for Springfield by F. S. Hyde) REFERENCES
1. Arlt, Gustave O. Graduate Education in the United States. Paper presented at the AAHPER Conference in Washington, D. C., January, 1967.
2. Arsenian, Seth. The Meaning of Humanics. Paper presented to Springfield College faculty and students. January, 1967. 3. Arsenian, Seth. Changes in Attitudes and Values During Four Years of College. Paper presented to Springfield College faculty and students. January, 1968.
4. Bruner, Jerome S. On Knowing. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass. - 1962.
5. Bruner, Jerome S. Toward a Theory of Instruction. W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 1966.
6. Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1956.
7. Highet, Gilbert. Man's Unconquerable Mind. Columbia University Press. New York, 1954.
8. Hoffer, Eric. The Temper of our Time. Harper and Row, New York, 1967.
9. Koch, Sigmund. "Psychology and Emerging Conceptions of Knowledge as Unitary" in Behaviorism and Phenomenology - University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964.
10. Koestler, Arthur. The Art of Creation. MacMillan and Company, New York, 1964.
11. Jones, Ernest. The life and work of Sigmund Freud. Basic Books, New York, 1953.
12. Maslow, Abraham, H. Self-Actualizing People. Personality Symposia. No. 1, Grune & Stratton, New York, 1950.
13. Maslow, Abraham, H. ''Peak Experiences as Acute Identity Experiences", American Journal of Psychoanalysis. 1961. 21, p. 254- 260.
14. May, Rollo. Symbolism in Religion and Literature. George Braziller, New York, 1960.
15. Mullahy, Patrick. Oedipus, Myth and Complex. Hermitage House, Inc . New York, 1953.
16, Royce, Joseph R. Psychology and the Symbol. Random House, New York, 1965.
17. Sanford, Nevitt (Ed. ) College and Character. John Wiley, New York, 1964.
18, Smith, G. Kerry (Ed) In Search of Leaders. American Association for Higher Education.
N. E. A. Washington, D. C. 1967.
19. Smith, Huston. The Purpose of Higher Education. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1955.
20. Teevan, R. C. and Birney, R. C. Theories of Motivation in Personality and Social Psychology. New Jersey, D. Van Nostrand and Company, Inc. 1964. (Mallow's statement is on page 113).
21. Thompson, Thomas. "A Restless Generation of U. S. Youth Roams Abroad", Life Magazine. July 19, 1968.
22. Watson, Robert I. The Great Psychologists. 2nd Ed. J. B. Lippincott Company, New York, 1968.
23. Wolman, Benjamin B. Contemporary Theories and Systems in Psychology. Harper and Brothers. New York, 1960.
24. Woodring, Paul. The Higher Learning in America. McGraw-Hill, New York, N. Y. 1968.
25. Woodworth, R. S. and Sheehan, M.R. Contemporary Schools of Psychology, 3rd Ed. The Ronald Press, New York, 1964.
25. Woodworth, R. S. and Sheehan, M.R. Contemporary Schools of Psychology, 3rd Ed. The Ronald Press, New York, 1964.

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